A tech startup accelerator that has launched revenue-generating and VC-raising companies is coming to Columbus – light show, confetti cannon and all.
CodeLaunch, a hackathon and pitch competition in its 10th year, is expanding into its third new market just over two years after IT consulting firm Improving acquired its parent. Last year it added events in Houston and Atlanta.
"Columbus is the ideal place for something like this to happen," said Jacquie Bickel, vice president of Improving Ohio in the firm's Easton office. "There’s a community here that’s very connected and willing to put a hand out to help, vs. very locked and guarded with their knowledge."
Central Ohio and statewide idea-stage startups have until June 16 to apply for a multi-step competition. After a business development portion, judges pick about 10 to compete in a "draft" for free software development toward a prototype. Judges then pick four or five finalists for a "Shark Tank" style pitch competition, with the winner picked by audience vote.
Dallas-based Improving provides a team of coders to one of the startups and pays to organize and produce the event. It's attracted other sponsors and is recruiting more teams from Central Ohio software development shops, including Columbus-based QStart Labs and ZapIT.
There's no entry fee and startups won't give up equity.
"What’s part of our DNA is (a movement called) Conscious Capitalism: Business can and should be a force for good," Bickel said. "We’re engaging with other tech companies not from a competition perspective, but as a community: Let’s come together and make something cool like this happen."
Improving has a strong track record running the event in other cities, so should be able to sustain it in Columbus and boost the tech community, said Jeff Lamb, QStart Labs co-founder.
"It's got the right dynamics to be a competitive, engaging event," Lamb said.
"(Startups) can cut months of process out to figure out what they really want to be," he said. "A lot of them can start trying out their business model."
Lee Mosbacker, a serial entrepreneur and investor, is the event's presenting sponsor through a soon-to-launch startup. He took an Ohio State University spinoff to San Francisco several years ago, but now splits time with a home in New Albany.
"I want to get back into Columbus; I want to help startup founders in Columbus," he said. "Finding quality tech teams is difficult."
Judges so far include Mosbacker and Ryan Retcher, COO and senior partner at Columbus venture capital firm Loud Capital.
How CodeLaunch got launched
Jason Taylor started CodeLaunch in 2013 as an outreach of Code Authority, the suburban Dallas software development firm he founded in 2001. He wanted to nurture ideas that were dying on the vine for lack of funding.
"They were stuck in a Catch-22: You can't build without a raise, and you can't raise without product," Taylor said.
As the event grew and started attracting applicants from outside Texas, free coding became unsustainable for his company, he said, so he started bringing in other firms.
Dallas-based Improving sent a team of coders in 2018, and acquired all of Code Authority at the end of 2019, planning to build CodeLaunch as a national accelerator brand through its other offices. The pandemic interrupted plans.
Past events have generated profitable businesses and some that have raised millions in follow-up VC, Taylor said.
A finalist – not even the winner – of the October Houston event raised a $3.5 million seed round last month, the fastest any CodeLaunch startup has closed a round that size.
Startups must submit a pitch deck and "code-ready mockups" of the app or website.
Improving Ohio united the Columbus and Cleveland offices as a business unit in January. Applications are expected from around the state.
The final pitch event is Aug. 25 at the Riffe Center on Capitol Square.
"The pandemic has put a damper on startup events and activities," said Ben Blanquera, co-founder of networking group TechLife Columbus, via email. "The organizers are bringing a needed boost to bring new entrepreneurs and ideas out onto the light of day. I’m particularly glad to see that the winners get real prizes ... without losing equity."
The Columbus startup community has lacked a signature event for several years, Bickel said. She's attended four CodeLaunch events.
"The energy is pretty exciting," she said. "The people that have the ideas are inviting others who participated into this dream they had."
Even with sponsors, producing CodeLaunch is an expense for Improving, Taylor said, but a worthwhile one.
"Even though it was very expensive, it caused all the people on my team to believe our brand was bigger than selling software to someone, and the companies get rich and the boss gets rich," Taylor said. "It elevated the city, elevated our brand, and elevated the brands that helped us."
